Russian President Vladimir Putin is single-handedly trying to undermine democracy in the United States and Europe and rupture their decades-old NATO alliance by meddling in their elections, foreign affairs analysts and Estonia’s former president told a congressional hearing Thursday in Washington. One of the experts, Peter Doran, executive vice president of the Center for European Policy Analysis, a group promoting closer ties between central and eastern European countries and the United States, said U.S. lawmakers “should have no doubt, Russia is a rival to the United States.” Doran declared, “The Russian government is sharpening its use of state-sponsored propaganda against Western democracies. This puts democratic states and NATO at risk. The strategic aims of the Russian government are fundamentally incompatible with American interests in Europe.”
Doran added, “Russia wants to establish a sphere of privileged influence in Europe and to do so, [it] must weaken America’s links to our allies, divide NATO and, if necessary, use force.”
Repeating President Donald Trump’s signature campaign slogan, Doran said, “I think it is very obvious that Putin does not want to ‘make America great again.’ In fact, Putin has the opposite goal, however our allies do. Allies like front-line states, the Baltic states, Poland and others, neighbors of Russia, they actually want us to succeed. Russia does not [want them to].”
Former Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that Putin “in all cases” wants “anti-European Union, anti-NATO forces” to win European elections in Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands this year.
Full Article: Putin Aims to Undermine Western Democracies With Election Meddling, Experts Say.